Creatively Applying Ted Reed's Progressive Steps to Syncopation For The Modern Drummer

This book has been voted as the second best drum book by Modern Drummer. Since it's release, teachers and students have been applying this book to their playing and teaching.

By including this book in your practice routine, you will be doing many things at once; developing your limb independence, jazz feel, meter, site reading skills, and concentration!

When you are playing the below examples, use a metronome. Start by setting it to 40bps. You will develop the best jazz time and metre this way; you should play everything at this metronome setting to develop the best technique you possibly can.

Here is a review the basic jazz feel; swing the eighths. It would be a good idea to start with the limb independence section

Ted Reed's book, or any other single line of music can be used to gain limb independence by playing the bars with one of your limbs while playing the basic jazz feel. Here, we are applying exercise 1 from the book to the snare drum,
under the basic jazz feel.

Here is an interpretation of number 1 on page 34.

1) Apply the exercise to the snare drum (as shown above)

2) Play the exercise with your bass drum.

3) Play the exercise with your hi-hat . Once you have that down, play the part with your left foot on the hi-hat, instead of on the snare.

1) Play the long notes on the bass drum, and the short notes on the snare (shown above)

2) Play the long notes on the snare, and short notes on the hi-hat

3) Play the long notes on the hi-hat and the short notes on the snare

4) Play the long notes on the bass drum, and the short notes on the snare

5) Find different variations; explore your creativity.

1) Here's a more challenging idea: Start by playing this snare drum ostinato.
Then play one of the book's exercises with your bass drum (shown in the next example)

1) Here is the snare drum ostinato, with the bass drum playing the musical line.

2) Play the exercise with your hi-hat, while feathering "4 on the floor" with your bass drum.

3) Play the musical line between your feet

We hope you discovered some new ideas to incorporate into your practice sessions. Practicing these are great because you aren't just practicing one thing - you are practicing your site reading, your independence, your jazz time, and your meter. Remember to check out the other jazz sections, such as Limb Independence, Latin Jazz and Interpetting Stick Control by George Lawrence Stone. Please support this site by purchasing your copy of this book at Amazon.com by clicking here.